By Donna Howes, CPHR

Over the past decade or more, there’s been a world-wide revolution as organizations large and small have taken a stand for coaching as a vital HR strategy and business driver.

Coaching Business Improvements
The acknowledged clout of a ‘coach approach,’ along with a surge in organizations pursuing a coaching culture now firmly places coaching in the domain of effective human resources management. As per the findings of the 2014 study, Building a Coaching Culture, by the International Coach Federation in partnership with Human Capital Institute:

“Coaching offers companies a significant return on investment with 86 per cent stating they had made back at least their initial investment through increased productivity measured by improvements in work performance (70 per cent), business management (61 per cent) time management (57 per cent) and team effectiveness (51 per cent).”

Similarly, the study revealed multiple benefits for individual clients, and revealed a significant return on investment (ROI) for companies:

• 65 per cent of employees are highly engaged in strong coaching culture organizations compared to 52 per cent of employees in other organizations.
• Organizations with a strong coaching culture also report greater financial performance: 60 per cent report being above their industry peer group in 2013 revenue compared to 41 per cent of all others.

A Measure of Greater Shared Value
While the benefits of coaching are self-evident from any number of perspectives, measuring the actual return on investment, whether in time, human resources or budget, remains an essential conversation that every organization needs to have before embarking on the journey of creating a coaching culture.

Why?  Well, Peter Hawkins, a leading researcher in culture change and organizational learning and author of Creating a Coaching Culture (2012), answers the question by emphasizing that “creating a coaching culture is not an end in itself, but a means to an end… (It is) in service of creating greater shared value for the organization and all its key stakeholders.”

And while there are many definitions of ‘coaching culture,’ most are aligned with leaders who create space for authentic and meaningful conversations at all levels of the organization. Clutterbuck, Megginson & Bajer (2016) introduced the notion that a coaching culture is one where “the principles, beliefs, and mindsets driving people’s behavior in the workplace are deeply rooted in the discipline of coaching.”

Real Measures and ROI of Coaching Culture
Communicating the ROI of coaching culture begins with developing a strong case for coaching as a critical talent management tool that allows employees to 1) enhance their skills and performance, 2) achieve personal and professional goals, and 3) unlock their potential to grow as individuals.

These attributes are among the cultural and behavioral signifiers that underpins CoachingWise—ICF designation that recognizes and celebrates organizations which build and sustain coaching cultures through organizational and leadership beliefs and practices that reflect coaching as a strategic business driver.

ROI Success Stories: Coaching Culture Wins
Launched in 2015, there are now 14 organizations across British Columbia that hold the CoachingWise designation, each with their own story about how they have successfully built the HR business case to communicate the ROI of coaching culture. A glimpse into a few of their coaching culture success stories is telling.

Coaching Fuels AFCC Shift
As an ICF Vancouver 2016 Prism Winner and CoachingWise recipient, Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation Corp. (AFCC) is a BC-based joint venture between Daimler AG and Ford Motor Company developing technology for zero-emission automobiles.  In 2012, AFCC embarked on a multi-year plan to transition to a coaching culture by introducing coaching to all levels of the organization.

Their vision was to integrate coaching into a technical and scientific environment—no small feat. “Our goal as an organization is to use this powerful tool to help our employees be the best they can be, and help our organization meet its key strategic goals,” says Glenn St. Onge, head of human resources.

Today, over 50 per cent of AFCC’s extended leadership team have received formal training through the Coaches Training Institute (CTI).  With these additional coaches in place, close to 50 per cent of the company’s employees have received coaching.  Coaching is now embedded in the leadership development, performance management, and career and onboarding programs.

“We see a huge shift in how people are working and communicating with each other and how they are dealing with and resolving their individual and group challenges,” says St. Onge. “My advice for building a coaching business case is to start small, create a few quick wins, share success stories, and partner with a senior non-HR champion.”

BC Hydro Pilot Grows and Soars
For the past ten years, BC Hydro has invested in establishing a flourishing coaching culture. In 2012, they piloted an Internal Coaching Program in 2012 with 14 coaches; it now has 65 internal coaches.

“We want to grow leadership capacity at all levels,” says Michelle Robindell, senior learning partner with BC Hydro. “Our coaching and leadership programs have been instrumental in improving employee engagement and personal effectiveness. We believe that building a coaching culture is key to us delivering on BC Hydro’s vision ‘to be the most trusted, innovative utility company in North America by being smart about power in all we do.’

In addition to status as an inaugural CoachingWise recipient and honourable mention winner in the 2016 PRISM Awards, this commitment has helped earned BC Hydro recognition as a top employer by Forbes, BC’s Top Employers, Canada’s Best Diversity Employers, and Canada’s Top Employers for Young People. Robindell says a key to communicating the ROI of building a coaching culture at BC Hydro has been results from annual, anonymous surveys that consistently show coaching is a preferred development practice with 100 per cent of coaches stating that “coaching is more effective than other employee development tools.”

TELUS-CSD: The Future is Friendly (and Wise)
With over 2,700 TELUS Customer Solutions Delivery (CSD) team members responsible for providing field services across British Columbia and Alberta, in late 2014, senior leaders identified a need to empower leadership to help teams reach their full potential.

“Our mandate was clear,” says Michelle Gaites, director of business strategy development. “Coaching was not to be a point in time exercise, but a complete cultural shift that would over time become part of our DNA.”

“Our approach to building a business case and communicating the return on investment (ROI) for a coaching culture that was not just focused on business outcomes.  It involved robust, fair process that included speaking to a lot of people who shared their stories and the lessons learned from their experiences,” Gaites says. “This, coupled with our clear understanding of our current state, gave us an accurate vision of what we wanted to achieve through our investment in coaching culture.”

Today, TELUS’s CSD team fosters a culture that is championed by its executive leaders, wherein the impact and ROI of the coaching program is tied to positive indicators in employee engagement—and ultimately, says Gaites, in their customer’s likelihood to recommend TELUS’ products and services.

Coaching Culture Inventory: Academic Research into ROI
Despite the growing body of evidence regarding the benefits of coaching and coaching cultures, you as an HR professional know you’ll face a lightening round of questions when introducing something new at your organization.  “How much?” “What guarantees do we have?” “What will be different?”

Currently, there is no validated psychometric measure of coaching culture representing the views of credentialed coaches or of organizations that invest in coaching.  However, this may change in the future.

Julie Jenkins, a learning and development specialist with the City of Surrey, has devoted her Master’s thesis to developing a simple, reliable measure called the Coaching Culture Inventory (CCI). Her academic research goal is to expand our theoretical understanding of coaching culture and develop a statistically validated psychometric tool that measures important outcomes of a coaching culture related to employee well-being and organizational effectiveness.

Her hope is that the study will shape the field in the same way that Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn did when they developed the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI)—used by over 12,000 companies worldwide to diagnose and change organizational culture.

Removing the Guess Work
“Anecdotally, there’s a lot known about coaching cultures in general,” says Jenkins, “but we’re still not able to say definitively what works and what doesn’t when creating a coaching culture from a theoretical perspective. Adding academic rigour to investigate the lived-experience of coaching and its contribution to creating a coaching culture from multiple perspectives will help to eliminate the guesswork.”

Jenkins believes her research findings and CCI instrument will ground coaching culture building efforts in real and reliable outcomes, and offer human resource professionals the ability to say with certainty where HR investment dollars are returning the greatest value.

“I’m hoping to develop a better understanding of which factors contribute to creating a coaching culture more than others. Once validated, the CCI would be easily integrated into an organization’s existing employee engagement survey to answer the question, ‘If we’re going to invest our training and leadership coaching budget anywhere, where would we invest to get the best return?’” Jenkins says.

Jenkins’ aim is noble and needed. To create a practical and meaningful psychometric tool to capture the dimensions of an effective coaching culture will effectively elevate the HR conversation from ‘communicating the ROI of coaching culture’ to one of building and sustaining a coaching culture through organizational and leadership beliefs and practices.

Catch Up On Coaching
Check out these books and research findings:

• Building and Sustaining a Coaching Culture – Clutterbuck et al 2016
• Creating a Coaching Culture – Peter Hawkins, 2012
• Building Coaching Culture with Managers and Leaders – HCI / ICF 2016
• Building a Coaching Culture – HCI / ICF 2014
• Return on investment in executive coaching: a practical model for measuring ROI in organisations – Paul Lawrence & Ann Whyte 2014
• Measuring and maximizing the business impact of executive coaching – Levenson A. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. 2009 Jun;61(2):103.
• Practical Methods for Evaluating Coaching – Institute for Employment Studies 2006

Donna Howes, CPHR, is principal of Humanity at Work and founder of CoachingWise, an ICF designation that recognizes organizations who build and sustain a coaching culture.